Businesses depend on their data and applications like never
before, and data protection is a critical component of nearly every company's
IT strategy. Even two hours of downtime can significantly impact productivity
and sales. If you can't recover your data quickly in the event of a natural
disaster, equipment failure, or cyberattack, your ability to maintain
operations could be compromised.

This article outlines seven key considerations that every
SMB should factor into their evaluation of cloud backup providers.

Key SMB considerations for cloud backup

Reasons for the popularity of cloud backup among SMBs
include lower upfront capital costs, reduced IT complexity, and a pay-as-you-grow
model that scales cost-effectively to support business growth. Cloud backup is
reliable, highly automated, and easy to use. It's also more secure than
on-premise solutions like tape backup, because your data is stored offsite.

But not all cloud backup providers offer the same level of
service. Some offerings are not "business class" and are more
appropriate for individuals, for instance; others have features (and often
costs) more appropriate for enterprises than SMBs.

What considerations are most critical for SMBs choosing a
cloud backup provider? The following seven factors consistently top the list.

1: Security

What good is backing up your data if your backed-up files
are vulnerable to exploitation by cybercriminals? Data is vulnerable both at
rest and while in transit between your business and the cloud. You need to be
able to encrypt your data not only when it's being uploaded, but also once it's
been stored.

Top-tier cloud backup providers offer "end-to-end"
256-bit encryption — but encryption is only as strong as the encryption key.
Most services will manage your encryption keys for you, which is acceptable for
many businesses. But for compliance with HIPAA and other regulations, or simply
for additional security, some SMBs will need to manage their own encryption
keys so that the provider cannot access their data.

2: Performance and versatility

The performance of a cloud backup service is key to reducing
backup windows and minimizing the total volume of data being backed up. The
advent of faster Internet speeds, combined with advances in data compression
and deduplication, enable top-tier providers to offer SMBs very fast backups
and restores with no restrictions on bandwidth. However, low-end providers
often restrict upload rates, which can slow backups to a crawl.

To optimize costs and performance, it's essential that a
provider offer incremental backups (also called delta blocking), so that only
files and parts of files that are new or changed since the last backup will be
included in a backup. It's also important for the service to back up open
files, and for it to support all the platforms (Windows, Linux, UNIX, Mac) and
applications (Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server/Dynamics, SharePoint, Hyper-VMware,
Oracle) your business uses.

3: Pricing structure

SMBs need to balance service with costs. The best cloud
backup providers offer excellent service along with an affordable, flexible
pricing structure that can fit your business model.

Cloud storage billing is typically based on the amount of
data uploaded, stored, and downloaded, and the number and types of requests for
backups and restores. Be sure to ask for details about setup costs,
hardware/software fees, cost per gigabyte of data stored, and whether there are
additional charges for "overages."

In addition, some vendors charge for every file access
(read, write, open) in addition to per-gigabyte and download charges. If you
are moving large blocks of data, these access charges may not be a major issue.
However, if you are doing a significant number of database lookups and updates,
the costs can add up fast.

4: Availability

Availability and uptime are a function of a provider's
investments in its data center(s). Data centers are rated according to tiers, a
standard methodology that defines the level of availability they can offer.
Tier 1 data centers (the lowest tier) lack redundant capacity components
(uplink and servers) and can offer 99.671% availability.

At the other end of the spectrum, Tier 4 data centers offer
fully redundant and fault-tolerant components (uplinks, storage, chillers, HAVC
systems, servers, etc.) and can achieve 99.995% reliability. The best cloud
backup providers offer Tier 4 availability along with competitive pricing.

5: Regulatory compliance

Who is handling your data, and how is it being handled?
Regulations like HIPAA, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard and others are
increasingly focused on how third parties handle sensitive data. Will your
cloud backup provider help or hinder your chances of passing a regulatory audit?

The "gold standard" for cloud backup providers is SOC 2 Type II certification (which
replaced SAS 70 last year). This is an audited attestation of controls and
procedures related to security, availability, processing integrity, and
confidentiality/privacy. Providers with this level of certification can show
that they meet regulatory requirements.

6: Company policy

Does your SMB have an established policy for ensuring
business continuity and data security? What are your recovery time objectives
(RTOs) for key classes of data like financial records, contracts, and client
information? What is your retention and disposal policy for electronic records?

You need to ensure that prospective cloud backup providers
can 1) agree to the service levels you need, and 2) provide a set of
backup/restore procedures that fit well with your policy. For example, if your
company policy requires versioning of certain types of data, does the provider
offer versioning? Do they have a predefined retention period for deleted files?
You need your cloud backup provider to adjust its services to fit your
policies, not vice versa.

7: Avoiding vendor lock-in

Vendor lock-in means that a customer cannot easily
transition to a competitor's product or service, usually because the
proprietary technologies involved are incompatible with those of competitors, or
due to contract issues. In the case of cloud backup, many SMBs stay with a
provider that no longer meets their needs in order to avoid the complexities of
moving data from one cloud service to another.

The best way to avoid vendor lock-in issues is to perform
due diligence before signing a contract. What is the length of the contract? What
service levels does the provider agree to? Are there any restrictions on moving
your data elsewhere? In particular, ask whether a vendor facilitates moving
customer data out of its repository, and whether they provide migration tools
or services for moving large volumes of data. Ask also whether a provider
supports emerging industry standards, such as the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI).

Conclusion

Leveraging cloud backup can help SMBs save money, improve
their level of data protection, manage data growth, and comply with
regulations. But it's essential to look carefully at a prospective cloud backup
provider to ensure their service is a good fit with your business needs.

This guest post was
written by Tim Hannibal, founder and CEO of VaultLogix.